A triumphant tale of goodness, modesty and kindness, “One Life” with Anthony Hopkins would be difficult to believe — if it weren’t all true.
In 1938-39 when Hitler’s Nazi regime occupied Czechoslovakia and initiated WWII, Nicholas Winton, a London stockbroker, visited the capital city of Prague. He decided he had to do something to help the stranded refugees who would otherwise be taken prisoner and sent to extermination camps.
Ultimately, Winton rescued 669 mostly Jewish children, getting each a British visa, a foster family and the government’s 50 pound fee.
Winton’s remarkable acts of heroism went unnoticed until in 1988 he appeared on a live BBC-TV show and met one of the children he saved. That changed Winton’s life, unleashing a flood of attention and reunions with those from the Prague kindertransport as it was known. He was 106 when he died in 2015.
Hopkins stars as the elderly Winton in “One Life” with Helena Bonham Carter as his wartime mother.
Last week his son Nick Winton and kindertransport survivor Eva Paddock, 88, were interviewed from London.
“I was on a train with my sister Milena as the film portrays,” Paddock began. “We were taken into a family office station in Liverpool Street. My sister and I were very fortunate. We were taken into foster care by a couple in the north of England, who had signed up to take one child. But I was three and held my arms around my sister’s neck. (I was also very cute in those days.)
“They decided they couldn’t separate us!”
In 1940 the sisters were reunited with their parents who arrived in England separately.
Eva met Winton once he had been publicly identified. “My sister lived in the north of England and I was already living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Many people began to get in touch with him. My husband and I went to visit him one day. It was a wonderful experience.”
“I guess everybody knows he was an extraordinary man. When I was very young I didn’t recognize that he had that impact,” Nick said.
“Because he liked people; he just wasn’t particularly fond of recognition. Only really when I saw ‘That’s Life!’ when the children stood up did I recognize the impact of what he’d done.”
“It’s a privilege to be around to support this story,” Eva added, “as one of the very few of us witnesses here to say, ‘Yes, this film is true. This film is well made. This film tells the story as it should be told.’
“There’s a strong message here, which has to do with Holocaust education.”
“One Life” opens on March 15